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Horace Greeley upon Tilden. 



TILDEN'S 



Responsibility for Election Frauds. 



TILDEN IN FAVOR OF TREATING 
WITH THE REBELS. 



TILDEN as a LEGISLATOR 



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HORACE GREELEx UPON TILDEN. 

TILDEN'S RESPONSIBILITY FOR ELECTION FRAUDS. 

The gigantic frauds upon the ballot-box committed in the 
city of New York in 1868, by which John T. Hoffman was 
chosen Governor and" the success of the Tweed Ring se- 
cured, are now confessed and notorious. By these frauds 
New York City was made in that year to return as cast nearly 
113,000 Democratic votes in a total of 156,000 votes, while, 
in spite of the increase of population, there have since that 
time never been cast in that city over 137,500 votes, and the 
Democratic party has never pretended to have cast more than 
86,700 votes. While part of the fraud was certainly commit- 
ted by illegal voting, most of it was accomplished by fraudu- 
lent counting. The following papers show how that fraudu- 
lent counting was prearranged, and how Samuel J. Tilden 
acquiesced in and, to say the least, did not interfere to pre- 
vent the use of bis name in carrying out the foul conspiracy : 

About one week prior to the election the following circu- 
lar was issued by the Democratic State Committee, of which 
Samuel J. Tilden was chairman. Its genuineness has been 
admitted under oath. 

"PRIVATE AND STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL. 

" Rooms of the Democratic State Committee, ) 

October 27, 1868. J 

" My Dear Sir — Please at once to communicate with some 
reliable person in three or four principal towns, and in each 



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city of your county, and request him (expenses duly arranged 
for this end) to telegraph to William JVL Tweed, Tammany 
Hall^ at the minute of closing the polls, not waiting for the 
count, such person's estimate of the vote. 

"Let the telegraph he as follows': 

" ' This town will show a Democratic gam (or loss) over last 
year of (number), or this one is sufficiently certain. This town 
will give a Republican (or Democratic) majority of - — .' 

" There is of course an important object to be attained by a 
simultaneous transmission at the hour of closing the polls, but 
no longer waiting. Opportunity can be taken cf the usual 
half-hour lull in telegraphic communication over lines before' 
actual results begin to be declared, and before the Associated 
Press absorb the telegraph with returns, and interfere with in- 
dividual messages ; and give, orders to watch carefully the 

count. 

"SAMUEL J. TILDEN, 

" Chairman" 

Of course the "important object to be attained " was, in 
fact, to form an estimate of the Republican majority in the 
honest rural districts, so as to be sure to overcome it by a 
fraudulent count in the city. Unfortunately, the conspiracy 
succeeded. And now, six years afterwards, Samuel J. Tilden 
seeks the suffrages of the same people whom he allowed to be 
defrauded by the use of his name. 

What Horace Greeley thought of these frauds, and Mr. 
Tilden's share in them, is shown in the following letter which 
he published in the Tribune of October 20, 1869 : 

LETTER TO A POLITICIAN. 

To Samuel J. Tilden, 

Chairman Democratic State Committee : 
Sir — You and I are growing old. We came here young 
from the country, and have! lived and struggled side by side 





for nearly forty years. We have participated ardently in man„ 
political struggles, always on different sides. t 



On one very important point, however, your bitterness as 
a pa/ '^an has impelled you to ignore and come short of your 
du\ :i - ; zen and a professed upholder of government by 

the peo t ■ ^ob this dereliction i here arraign you. 

1 allude to u J nervation of the purity of the ballot-box. 



You and rew up in the country, and are familiar with 
elections as /e conducted. We both know that, except in 
a few districts where the voters are all on one side, it is 
morf ly impossible that any considerable proportion of fraud- 
ulent votes should there be polled. 



I do not believe that the illegal vote in the rural districts 
was ever one per cent, of the whole number polled, even 
when there was no registration of legal voters. 

How different is the case in cities, and especially in this 
Babel, you very well know. Long as you have lived on 
Gramercy Park, and eminent in social position and fortune 
as are the inhabitants of that favored locality, you could not 
tell, with intwenty, which of the residents in sight of your 
front door are, and which are not, entitled to vote ; you could 
not make a list of the legal voters residing on that square, 
.iiich would even approach accuracy. How it must be, then, 
with the nomadic denizens of our " back slums," and of our 
great tenement houses — how utterly impossible it is that any 
one should know which among them are, and which are not 
legal voters, and whether a man who offers to vote at 11 a. m. 
at one poll has or has not already voted several times at dif- 
ferent polls, and whether he is or ^s "ot on his way ^.vote 

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•*till oftener at other polls, you cannot help knowing if you 
I rould. I can imagine how a man may shut his eyes to many 
things which he deems it convenient not to know ; but I 
must speak of what you must know, however you may wish or 
seek to be ignorant of it. The matter to which I call your 
attention is vital to the very existence of free, popular govern- 
ment. Whenever it shall be generally understood that the re- 
sults of elections are not determined by the ballots of legal 
voters, but by frauds in voting or frauds in counting, then the 
advent of avowed, unequivocal despotism must be near at 
hand. Between the rule of an Emperor and the rule of a 
clique of ballot-box shifters, every intelligent man must prefer 
the former as less rapacious and more responsible. When 
honest citizens shall avoid the polls, asking " What is the use 
of voting ? the result is already fixed," the days of the Re- 
public will be numbered. Between a ruler who prohibits 
voting altogether and the gang who make it a sham by filling 
the ballot-boxes with illegal votes, or miscounting those actu- 
ally cast, the sway of the former is every way preferable. 

Mr. Tilden, I have been voting here for 37 years, and 
an active politician for more than 30 of them, and I appeal to 
God for my sincerity and to my public record for a witness, 
that in all those years I have earnestly sought and labored 
to \v >. our elections decided by legal votes and none other. 
S r • how great are the temptations and the facilities 
/& right of suffrage so general as ours to poll illegal 
/ 1 have openly and actively favored every effort to shut. 

/a out and keep the suffrage pure and legal. That every 
legal voter should have a full and fair opportunity to vote 
once at each election — that no one should be enabled to vote 
more than once — and that none but legal voters should be 
allowed or empowered to vote at all — such has been my con- 
stant aim. I have not confined my©elf to barren professions, 
but hai-e shown ray faith by mv works. 
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How is it with you ? You hold a most responsible and 
influential position in the counsels of a great party. You 
could make that party content itself with polling legal votes 
if you only would. In our late Constitutional Convention I 
tried to erect some fresh barriers against election frauds. 
Did you ? The very little that I was enabled to effect in this 
direction I shall try to have ratified by the people at our en- 
/ suing election. Will you? Mr. Tilden, you cannot escape 

responsibility by saying, with the guilty Macbeth, 

"Thou canst not say I did it; never shake 
Those gory locks at me," 

for YOU WERE AT LEAST A PASSIVE ACCOMPLICE IN THE GIANT 
FRAUDS OF LAST NOVEMBER. 

Your name was used, without public protest on your .part, 
in circulars sowed broadcast over the State, whereof the mani-^' 
fest intent was to " make assurance doubly sure " that the 
frauds here perpetrated should not be overborne by the honest 
vote of the rural districts. And you, not merely by silence, 
but by positive assumption, have covered ■'" ^ frauds with 
the mantle of your respectability. 

On the principle that " the receiver is as bad as the thief," 

YOU ARE AS DEEPLY IMPLICATED IN THEM TO-DAY AS THOUGH 
YOUR NAME WERE TWEED, O'BRIEN, OR OAKEY HaLL. 

Mr. Tilden, you and I were ardent participants in the 
struggle of 184:0 wherein Martin Van Buren was ousted from 
the Presidency by General Harrison. You know how 
thoroughly our city was absorbed in that contest, wherein 
every man, woman, and child, took a deep and lively inter- 
est. Our elections were then held throughout three days. 
There was a registration freshly enacted which blacklegs had 
not yet learned to circumvent, the Right of Suffrage was as 
widely diffused as it now is, and no one ever complained that 



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a single legal voter was unable then to poll his vote. And 
though our city has since largely increased its population, the 
lower Wards were quite as populous then as they are to-day — 
several of them more so. They' were fall of boarding-houses 
crowded with clerks and mechanics ; many of these covered 
sites since given up to great warehouses and manufactories ; 
their denizens have moved up town, over to Brooklyn, or out 
on some of the railroads that lead into the open country. 
Practically the lower Wards are being given up to commerce, 
and no longer shelter by night the multitudes who throng 
their streets by day. 

Now look at the vote of four of these Wards in 1840 and 
1868 respectively : 

Wards. President, 1840. Governor, 1868. 

/ Harrison. Van Buren. Griswold. Hoffmann. 

IV 1,138 1,177 480 3,830 

VI 806 1,223 369 5,032 

VII 1,707 1,728 1,265 6,895 

XIV 1,142 1,393 726 4,526 



4,793 5,521 2,840 20,283 

Van Buren's majority, 726. Hoffman's majority, 17,443. 

Mr. Tilden, you know what this contrast attests. Right 
well do you comprehend the means whereby the vote of 1868 
was thus swelled out of all proportions. There are not 
twelve thousand legal voters living in these Wards to day, 
though they gave Hoffman 17,443 majority. Had the day 
been of average length it would doubtless have been swelled 
to at least 20,000. There was nothing but time needed to 
make it 100,000, if so many had been wanted and paid for. 

Note, Mr. Tilden, I call on you to put a stop to this busi- 
ness. You have but to walk into the Sheriff's, the Mayor's, 
and the Supervisor's offices in the City Hall Park, and say that 



there must he no more of it — say it so that /here shall be no 
doubt iltat you mean it — and we shall have a, tolerably fair elec- 
tion once more. Probably a good part of the 50,000 sup- 
plied last fall with bogus naturalization certificates will offer 
to register and to vote. Some of them pretending not to 
know that they are no more citizens of the United States than 
the King of Dahomey is — but very few will vote repeatedly 
unless paid for it, and we shall not be cheated more than 
10,000 if you simply tell the boss workmen that there must 
be no more illegal voting instigated and paid for. 

Will you do it f Your reputation is at stake. The cow- 
ardly craft which 

" Would uot play false, and yet would wrongly win," 

will not avail. If we Republicans are swindled again as 
we were swindled last fall, you and such as you will he re- 
sponsible to God and man for the outrage. 

Prosecutors, magistrates, municipal authorities, are all in 
the pool ; we have no hope from the ministers of justice, and 
the villains have no fear of the terrors of the law. 1 appeal to 
you, and anxiously await the result. 

Yours, 

HOKACE GKEELEY. 



WHAT MR. GREELEY THOUGHT OF MR. TILDEN 
IN 1860— FOURTEEN YEARS AGO. 

In November, 1860, Mr. Tilden had written and printed 
a traitorous letter; thereupon, Mr. Greeley said of him in the 

Tribune : 



" Mr. Tilden is an aged man, u^ 
with all decorous veneration ; but wii 



wish to treat him 
allow us respectfully 



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to suggest that when he merely desires to be pathetic and im- 
pressive, he will do well to avoid falling into the broad farce of 
inane and insane exaggeration. 

"Mr. Tilden was one of those Anti-Slavery Democrats 
who, in 1848, defeated and crushed Gen. Cass, because he 
would, not go with them for the Wilmot Proviso. Now he 
writes letters encouraging treason and stimulating disunion, 
because a conservative old Whig, like honest Abe Lincoln, is 
on Tuesday next to be elected President. 

" 'In life's last scene, what prodigies surprise, 
Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise. 
From Marlb'rough's eyes the streams of dotage flow, 
And Swift expires a driveler and a show.'" 



SAMUEL J. TILDEN AS A REBEL SYMPATHIZER. 

In April, 1861, at the outbreak of the war, there was held 
in New York City the famous meeting known as the Union 
Square Meeting, in which everybody, except the most ultra 
sympathizers with treason, participated. Even Fernando 
Wood attended, and was one of the speakers ; but Samuel 
J. Tilden refused to join in the call for the meeting, or to 
give- it his support. 

Hon. Samuel Sloan, a prominent Democrat, now Presi- 
dent of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, and 
Mr. Tilden's friend, called upon him and urged him to take- 
part in the meeting, but he utterly refused, because he had no 
sympathy with its objects. 

Mr. Tilden's subsequent course shows that he was at least 
consistent in his opposition to the war. He was not only a 
member of the Democratic National Convention held at 



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Chicago, in August, 1864, but he moved the appointment of 
the Committee on Resolutions, and was a member of the sub- 
committee to whom their preparation was especially entrusted. 



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The Convention met during some of the darkest days of 
the war. After the battles of the Wilderness our advance 
had been checked before Petersburg. The futile explosion of 
"the mine," and the attack on Cold Harbor had caused enor- 
mous losses to our troops. In the preceding month Early 
had cut the railroad between Baltimore and Philadelphia, and 
advanced upon Washington till his forces were literally with- 
in range of the Capitol. Grant was calling for additional 
troops, and, only thirteen days before the Convention met, 
had written to one of the loyal Governors that "the end is not 
far distant if Ave are only true to ourselves. Their [the rebels] 
only hope now is in a divided North." 



In this condition of things Samuel J. Tilden took steps to 
have, not only a divided North, but to secure an abandonment 
of the war, and the making of a treaty with rebels in arms. 
Mr. Tilden, in the Chicago Convention, joined in reporting 
and favored a traitorous resolution in the following words : 



" Resolved, That this Convention does explicitly declare, 
as the sense of the American people, that, after four years of 
failure to restore the Union by experiment of war, during 
which, under the pretence of a military necessity, or war 
power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself 
has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and 
private right alike trodden down, and the material prosperity 
of the country essentially impaired — justice, humanity, liberty, 
and the public welfare demand that IMMEDIATE EFFORTS 
BE MADE FOR A CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES, 
with a view to an ultimate Convention of the States, or other 
peaceable means, to the end that^ at the earliest practicable 
moment, peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal 
Union of the States." 



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With such a record Samuel J.Tilden now seeks to be elect- 
ed Governor of the loyal State of New York in place of the 
gallant patriot John A. Dix. And he seeks this because, af- 
ter having supported Tweed during his whole career, having 
by Tweed's consent presided over the Democratic State Con- 
vention in 1870 after the attack had been opened upon the 
Ring* and having carefully held his tongue until the Ring 
was beaten, he then suddenly blossomed out as an Anti-Ring 
Reformer ! 



HOW TILDEN PERFORMS PUBLIC DITTIES. 

Mr. Tilden was a member of the Legislature in 1872. 
How he attended to his duties appears from the following re- 
cord : 

During the session of the Legislature the yeas and nays 
were called 1,8G3 times. Mr. Tilden was present and voted 
only 98 times; he was absent and not recorded 1,585 times. 



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